Large day-schools with low fees for girls were called for. This much was agreed on, but where was the necessary capital to be found? Among the public-spirited men and women who set themselves to answer this question, the foremost place belongs to Mrs. William Grey. She had for some time been working to get a share of educational endowments for girls. ‘Let me remind you,’ she wrote at this time, ‘that while there are in or near London alone the magnificent first-grade endowed schools for boys of the Charterhouse, Merchant Taylors, St. Paul’s, Harrow, and Eton, besides King’s College and University College schools, there is not in the whole of London an endowed school of a similar class for girls, and that while the proportion of educational endowments for girls to those for boys is as 1:92, the proportion of women supporting themselves is to men as 1:7.19; that is, to quote the words of Mr. William Brook, “seven times as many men are employed as women, but men have ninety-two times as much money as women, to arm, equip, and qualify themselves for the battle of life.”’ Failing endowments, or even side by side with them, capital must be obtained from other sources: this was the problem which had now to be faced. On May 31st, 1871, Mrs. Grey read a paper before the Society of Arts on the Education of Women. She described its extremely unsatisfactory condition, and suggested three remedies. (1) The creation of a sounder public opinion respecting the need and obligation of educating women. (2) The redistribution of educational endowments so as to give a fair share of them to girls. (3) The improvement of female teachers by their examination and registration according to fixed standards. In the following October, at the Social Science Congress at Leeds, she proposed the establishment of a national Union for the improvement of the education of women of all classes. Its objects should be—(1) To enlighten the public mind, through meetings and lectures throughout the country, on the present state of female education, on the national importance of improving it, and on the measures required for that end. (2) To collect and disseminate information respecting the best methods of education, the comparative advantages of large and small schools, the influence of endowments, and generally all questions connected with the training of girls. (3) To promote measures for the better training of female teachers, and especially for their examination and registration by fixed standards, so as to secure a measure of competency. (4) To assist the formation of councils similar to the North of England Council for the Education of Women in other divisions of the country, and, while endeavouring to multiply local centres of activity, to afford all workers in the same cause a common bond of union, and a means of intercommunication and combined action.